Cherniack, Giardina, Holt and Rosner join Advisory Committee

OnJuly 31, 2011

We are pleased to announce four new additions to The Hawks Nest Tunnel Advisory Committee. The new members include scholars and writers, activists and community leaders — all leaders in their fields, with great knowledge of Hawks Nest and West Virginia. A warm welcome to Martin Cherniack, Denise Giardina, Mildred Holt and David Rosner.

Martin G. Cherniack

Dr. Cherniack is the author of the foremost history of the Hawks Nest disaster, The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Accident, and a leading scholar of workplace safety and work related injuries.

As a physician and professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Dr. Cherniack is co-director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workforce, and director of the Ergonomic Technology Center. He received his medical degree from Stanford University and a Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Denise Giardina

Celebrated author and treasure of the West Virginia arts community, Denise Giardina is an ordained Episcopal Church deacon, a community activist and a former candidate for the West Virginia state governorship.

Often labelled an Appalachian writer, or a historical novelist, Giardina describes herself as a theological writer, exploring fundamental issues of faith and belief through literary characters. She is the winner of the American Book Award and the Boston Book Review fiction prize, and the author of five novels.

Mildred T. Holt

Mildred Holt is a community leader and dedicated advocate for environmental, health and safety protections. Her track record of grassroots organizing and knowledge of environmental and chemical hazards are extensive. For over thirty years she has served as director of many civic and professional organizations, including the National Institute for Chemical Studies and the West Virginia Commission on Children and Youth. She is a charter member of People Concerned about MIC (methyl isocynanate) founded in 1985, and a life-long member of the NAACP.

A retired teacher and director of personnel and professional certification in the Kanawha County schools, Holt has received many awards for her environmental justice activism, including the Hazo W. Carter Presidential Award and the Russell H. Wehrle Memorial Award.

David Rosner

David Rosner is a professor, scholar and prolific writer in the fields of public health, industrial pollution, worker safety, and sociomedical science and history. He is the co-author of Deadly Dust, Silicosis and the Struggle for Workers’ Health, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, and The Plague on All Our Houses: Lead Poisoning and the Conundrum of Public Health. Dr. Rosner is Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Science and History at Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. An elected member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and a Josiah Macy Fellow.